reed88 said:
Hello ,
Now go easy on me im new to detecting, Im considering buying a bandido umax II , question is it a better detector than the deleon , Ive been considering buying a deleon too , but only one at a time , the soils here in Ga are prettery soft , dont have much red clay where im at , ill be hunting coins , jewlery , relics, and almost anything under the soil , Are both these detectors bout the same dept wise , dont want to make woman of the house mad by spending a lot of money on newfound hobby , so guys any advice would be greatley appreicated , thanks in advance !
reed
If you can find a Bandido in excellent condition for under $300 you got a bargin. The Bandido or Eldorado (a few others) are similar to the DeLeon only you get the extra ability to ground balance the machine.
The Bandido with stock 8-inch coil will get about the same depth as a DeLeon with stock 9x8 coil. Add the Tesoro 12x10 concentric coil and the Bandido will beat the stock DeLeon by inches. In fact it will beat most VLF detectors made today (if you use the 12x10 coil).
Ground balance machines are a little tricky to use. For one thing you need to balance them over trash-free ground. Then they're simple to ground balance and they usually hold their balance for a long time.
The DeLeon (like all factory preset ground balance detectors) is ground balanced internally at the factory for one general type of soil condition. This makes for an easy turn on and go machine.
However, if the ground isn't in agreement with the factory set ground balance; you lose depth. The ground minerals will cancel out the good target signals.
With the DeLeon, if the ground balance isn't correct it will begin to become unstable. This means you must turn down the sensitivity. In so doing you will lose from little to a lot of depth. It all depends on how extreme the soil is.
With the Bandido (and all adjustable GB machines), you will usually lose only a little depth once you balance the detector to the soil conditions.
See ground minerals are like billions of pieces of metal in the soil. The more pieces the more this affects a metal detector.
Think of it this way, you mix cocoa into water. A little and the water gets cloudy. A lot and you can't see through it. It's like this when detecting in mineralized soil.
Too much mineralization in the ground and the detector just can't see the deep good targets. The minerals cancel out the responses from those targets. A coin 6 inches deep is like 60 inches deep to the detector. In other words, nothing there to detect.
The ground balance control is really a squelch control like those we used to have on old tube radios. The ground balance removes enough of the affects of mineralization so that the detector is once again able to see the target. It's kind of like removing some cocoa from the water so you can once again see through the water.
Ground balance doesn't really make a detector deeper. What it does do is free up the machine so it can see better to it's maximum potential depth. The ground balance removes some of that cloudy water, so ta speak. So now the detector says: "Hey, there's a target there in all that mess!"
Hope this helps some.
